The Moon Calendar

As promised, here is the Moon Calendar, to make your life simpler. I found my first moon calendar when I was living in Atlanta, GA. It was on the counter of a crunchy granola health food vegan bakery/grocery store called Sevananda. Why Sevananda, I don’t know.

At the time the store was on a narrow street in the funky neighborhood of Little Five Points, and rather small. It was nice to shop there because everything was kind of jammed in and squashed around itself to make room. (Now they have moved to a big bright store, still in Little 5, but it’s about 6 blocks and a world away.) On the counter, next to the bulk herbs, and behind the slippery elm throat lozenges was a pile of these cardboard Moon Calendars. They cost $2.50, and had colorful hippy-dippy designs on them.

I got one, and man oh man, did it make my life easier! I used to have to laboriously count days and try to guess when Aunt Flow would next burst into the room and wreck another pair of underwear. Now, with the Moon Calendar I can just glance at it, and say, okay, we are D minus 3, and keep on going.

What you do is this: mark the first day of your cycle by circling the date. Then circle the last day. Draw a line connecting the two circles. Then, you do the same for the subsequent cycles. After two or three you’ll see a pattern, like a wave going across the Calendar. As a rule I am pulled towards the full moon (like most other lunatics...Get it? LUNA-tics?! Heh heh!) My cycle charts diagonally across the moon calendar, getting closer to the full moon each month. On the calendar in the picture I have the full moon highlighted in yellow, the new moon is grey and my cycle highlighted in pink, to make it more clear.

For example, in August, the first day was the 28th, 8 days after the full moon. In September, Day One was the 24, 5 days after the full moon. In October, it was the 21st, 3 days afterwards. Now that I see my pattern, I know that I will have D-Day in November on the 18th or19th, just after the full moon appears. So, once I have put the first cycle on the chart each year, I can tell when I’ll have my menses (a word which makes me snicker for some puerile reason) throughout the year, even up to in December. This is mighty handy when planning a romantic skiing holiday, you see! I just watch for the full moon as my warning sign, or my handy calendar if the weather is being uncooperative.

I have posted the photo of my calendar for 2005, I apologize for it not being madly legible. You may notice that there are no marking for January to June. That is because I was nursing the boys full blast at that point so I still had lactation-induced amenorrhea. The first period was irregular, owing to my poor female parts being in a state of shock I guess. However, we are now weaned, and I am back to the regularly scheduled program; 5 or 6 days in duration, starting between three and seven days after the full moon. Yep, just call me the Queen of Tides.

If you would like a Moon Calendar of your own, and don’t want to look up the Phases of the Moon every year and create an Excel spreadsheet, I will be delighted to send you a copy. Just post a comment that includes your e-mail, and I’ll email you back with a calendar for your personal use. You can manipulate the colors when you have the spreadsheet at home, using the Spilled Paint Can Icon/Fill option on the top tool bar. And, if you so desire, I’ll send you a fresh calendar for 2006 when I make my own. As my faithful friends, family and readers know, I am a lot of things, only one of which is helpful.